Charubic Murder said:
I'd better specify before this gets too convoluted. I have around $600 to spend. I'm looking for an effects pedal with good delay and chorus mainly. Anything else is just a bonus. I really want to purchase new effects but my question on what guitars are great is just to get a feel what everyone is playing and what is good.
Ok, my 2 gil on this:
Playing a lot of different guitars is a good idea, but go more on build quality and playing feel than anything else. As for sound, listen to its non-distorted sound. You don't want to hear too much buzzing. Try to make the guitar go out of tune by bending a lot and using the tremolo. Abuse it a bit to make it show its true colors. If it goes out of tune easilly, it's not worth the trouble.
Do not choose a guitar after its distorted sound. If the distorted sound is lacking punch, you can always replace the pickups with better ones later.
As for brands I've tried:
1) Gibson: Way too overpriced for what you get and definately out of your budget.
2) Epiphone by Gibson: Good value, but the guitars usually come with a mediocre to bad adjustment job. It's common to find brand new Epi's with a lot of fret buzz. After a neck adjustment and some fret polishing, they are good guitars for your money. The stock pickups suck - period, so add an aftermarket pickup for the bridge position.
3) Ibanez: Mixed bag. The low-budget line sucks for the most part. The mid to high level models (with the Edge tremolo) are nice, but quality varies between individual guitars. Ibanez is not my favourite, so I don't know exactly what to look for tho'.
4) Jackson: Mixed bag. The USA Jacksons are very nice, but are out of your budget. With the budget-line "import" Jacksons, quality varies some between guitars, just like with Ibanez. According to my own experience, the Floyd copies on these are pretty decent - they generally stay in tune very well - but they don't have the quality of a real Floyd trem. The pickups on the budget Jacksons are decent for rock and softer metal, but you'll want to replace them if you're going to play anything heavier.
'bane